


liminality

by justrei



Category: Original Work
Genre: Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Anachronistic, Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Childhood Friends, College, Denial of Feelings, Emotional Constipation, Fluff, Gen, Growing Old Together, Growing Up Together, High School, Other, Pining, Self-Indulgent, Slow Burn, Underage Drinking, Unrequited Love, a dream i once had, i swear there will be a good ending, no beta we die like men, summer fics in the middle of winter lmfao, waiting ten years and then some
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-01-04
Updated: 2019-01-08
Packaged: 2019-10-04 01:53:33
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 5
Words: 2,095
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17295455
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/justrei/pseuds/justrei
Summary: it's the in-between moments; nowhere and everywhere and all-at-once; the spaces between our fingertips and gasps between broken lips; the tears that shimmer but don't fall; the silence between drops of leaky faucets: that's how i know i love you.





	1. gold

**Author's Note:**

> DISCLAIMER: These are all first drafts, and given the weird tense I chose to write in, there may be inconsistencies. I apologize for that. If I get enough energy to edit, I will do so, but until then... :3c

My mom is yelling at me to get up. It's already noon and all I want to do is stay holed up in my room. My room is nice and dark and far away from Mr. Sun and his angry rays.

I don't want to get up.

She yells again, saying it's my last warning, saying that there will be people over. Great, I can just stay in my room and avoid them. No need for social interaction.

She says that you are coming, with your parents, and wouldn't it be nice if you could play together instead of hiding in your room?

Oh no. You're coming. I'm not wearing any pants!

I hear the front door slide open. Greetings are exchanged. I struggle to get out of my cocoon in the darkness of my room, stumbling over the blanket once I kick it off.

I pull the drawstring tight across my waist when the door finally clicks shut. I can hear your parents being ushered noisily into the living room when your mom suggests you go find me.

I panic. I haven't seen anyone besides my mom in days. I definitely do not feel like seeing anyone besides my mom for days. I throw the mess of blanket onto the bed just as you step on the creaky floorboard. Oh no oh no ohnonononono-

"Hey, open up! My mom said I have to get you out of solitary confinement for the day."

Great, great, great. I'm cool, you're cool, we're all cool in here. Just open the door, no big deal, it's not like I haven't talked to you before-

"I'm self-imprisoned, thank you very much."

I finally slide my door open and look at your dumb face. I immediately start sweating.

"Why are you here." I'm the one that's dumb. Why do I even try.

"Pshhh, okay. I'm here to make sure you burn to death in the sun, you vampire." I'm annoyed that you're amused.

"For the last time, I am not-" And you grab my hand, my entire (sweaty) left hand, in yours. Even now, they're bigger than mine.

"Let's go! You're such a big baby."

Miffed, I stiffly follow, sticking to my routine of being a pissed-off cat.

"You talk too much."

"You whine too much!"

"You waste so much oxygen."

"So that's why you breathe through your mouth around me! Did you know you're a mouth-breather?"

You cackle as you dodge my flick to your forehead.

"Fight me! You don't get to say that when you drool in your sleep! You're disgusting!"

"Who's the one who cries so hard they get boogers on their face?"

"AAUGH! Get back here! I'm gonna kill you!"

I grab your ear but you twist out of my hold too fast for me to make it hurt. I chase you outside, onto the grass beneath the strong oak trees. 

We scrabble for purchase on the biggest one, climbing high believing we can touch the sky. We are champions of the earth, heroes of the sun. We play and scream and shout in childish pleasure until the fireflies come out, then sit on the porch to watch the sun set and bleed orange and red on an indigo sky. Your freckles turn to copper speckles on your cheeks and eyelids, eyes from roasted coffee beans to molten gold. As the sun dies and breathes its last gasp of light on the horizon, you laugh and smile contentedly at the first winking stars.

In that moment, I think you're beautiful.


	2. keepers

We’re both fifteen when we meet in that house again. 

 

It’s the summer house that my family fell in love with and couldn’t forget. We’ve bought it now and it’s ours to keep.

 

Dark wood all over, sliding doors. A single-story home to be filled with an infinite number of them. New and old, all at once.

 

I leave my parents behind and unlock the front door, my luggage tucked close behind me.

 

I stand at that threshold. I notice the dust motes climbing through a patch of sunlight that streams through the window. A cat looks in, then slips off the sill so silently it could have been my imagination. There is an absolute stillness of the house compared to the muffled swishing of the wild grass outside.

 

“So we’re back here again.” It’s you.

 

The moment is broken. I can’t focus enough to be in the moment when you’re standing so close to me.

 

“Go away, loser. Your breath is  _ rank _ .”

 

“More than likely, it’s your own sweat. I don’t know if you’d noticed, but you brought the entire Pacific Ocean with you.”

 

“Excuse me if I have a functional endocrine system!”

 

“You’re just like a cat. You stand in the doorway and get angry at people.” Your hubris means nothing to me. I don’t even know what that means, but it sounds about right.

 

You laugh as I huff and stalk away like the cat you say I am.


	3. waiting for someone

We meet every summer like that until we graduate college.

 

Now it’s just me in the house. Well, me and the cat when we caught and fed it junior year of high school. He’s lazy, snoozing on the sunny patch of the floor while I read my books for the fourth time this summer. When he looks at me, his eyes are a gold-flecked green, a bittersweet reminder of yours, flashing like warnings as the sun goes down.

 

The grass smells sweet and faintly alcoholic after a day of ripening under a hot sun. The fan I left on from earlier is whirring softly, the tags on it fluttering. The wood beneath my feet is still warm, a lingering heat from the sun-scorched earth.

 

I don’t know what I’m expecting, but I wait with bated breath. The seconds trickle by, rolling down my spine and under my arms. They chill on my skin and the boards leech the heat out of my toes. The moment passes yet again, silently, invisibly, unnoticeably.

 

It doesn’t exist anywhere except inside my heart.


	4. break, breaking, broke, broken

When we are eighteen, we go off to colleges far away from each other. No chance meetings or quick afternoon naps, no extended metaphors that run away and over the hills with us.

 

We leave our families behind in their beloved suburban homes while we rush off to leave for snowy winters in bustling cities. I trade in the wide country roads and potholes from an unforgiving sun for cramped, smokey alleys full of the stench of stale piss and beer. The skin off my bones for the night shift so I can earn money and get time alone to study, my soul for an A in organic chemistry, a few years and my liver in exchange for my sanity.

 

These are the concessions I made to forget you in the moment because remembering you makes me dizzy with a feeling I have no intention of naming.

 

I can’t face you even in my head, so I try to forget by erasing myself.

 

...

 

When I come to, it’s a full-blown blizzard outside the shuddering window panes. Groggily, I blink exhaustion from my eyes and blind myself with my phone. It’s three in the morning and I am stranded in a library a building away from my bed, on the second weekend in a row that I attempt to avoid drinking. It’s been so bad that a psych major friend cajoled me into meeting the school counselor. To prove I did not have a problem, I was abstaining from alcohol entirely for two months.

 

Two months is a long time.

 

Two months is a long time to remember why I fell to escapism in the first place. Time to think and regret and question why this had happened. Gives a name to the feelings I numbed with poison, and from that name a different poison with fantasies and lies broke apart the pieces I hadn’t known were just barely held together by willful ignorance. Fragile, fragmented, frightening.

 

Two months is too long, and after a bad day, I drink until I pass out, then choke on my own vomit in the middle of a party.


	5. apoptosis

I can’t find my phone.

 

...Where am I?

 

It’s dark. I can hear a faint beeping noise, probably not in the same room. Oh  _ fuck _ , my head hurts. Shit. Ah, shit.

 

I lay awake in that bed for a good chunk of time. It’s dark at first, but I stay awake until can see the pink rays slip into the cracks of the concrete clouds. My mind is so empty except my brain is throbbing, hot and heavy in between my ears.

 

I feel nauseous, but can’t move a muscle without feeling seeing stars. What did I drink?

 

I can already taste the sourness but I refuse to barf in my mouth.

 

I stay in a miserable heap, confined to my uncooperative meat coffin. The beeping is getting really annoying. I wish it would stop.

 

The sun finally pops out from the horizon and lazily crawls its way into the sky. Almost as soon as it separates from the hills, lights explode my eyeballs in some sort of violent glory. I groan incoherently, in pain. What the  _ fuck _ ?

 

“Rise and shine, get up! I’m your nurse, Hannah. Your head probably hurts like a  _ beach _ , but you’ll have to deal with it. I’ll be checking your vitals and get you out of here as soon as you finish signing  _ these _ ,” a clipboard is now under my nose, “and there’ll be no problems. No cops, no citations, nothing.”

 

My head and torso get shoved around as she checks pulse and my eyeballs and whatever else. I can’t bother functioning enough to acknowledge the manhandling besides the pain it puts me in.

 

I get handed a paper cup with water in it. It goes down like spring water in a muddy pipe.

 

“... Huh. Okay.” So I’m at a hospital (of course) and I seem to have done something stupid.

 

The nurse– Hannah– puts a pile of clothes on the foot of the bed.

 

“Your bag and other belongings are on the chair next to the door. I’ll come back in a few minutes; your paperwork should be done by then.”

 

I take another gulp of the water as she exits the room. My stomach turns and I clutch at it before running to the toilet stall.

 

…

 

I finish the process of sticking myself into clothing that isn’t paper and the filling the sheet of paper on the clipboard. There isn’t much to put, other than the fact I probably drank too much.

 

Hannah comes in, right on time. She takes the clipboard and points me over to the front desk so I can check out. I do so, but need a ride back to the dorms.

 

I swipe open my phone to find seven missed calls and twenty messages from my dorm mates. I open my messages.

 

Oh look, one of the messages is from you. Sent at 7:13 AM.

!@#$ one puppu boi:  _ spring break is coming up wanna go somewhere _

 

I leave you on read and call my dorm mates. I’ll call you later.

 

Ria arrives in her small, black buggy. The tires screech as she pulls over. I get in the car and lean into the backrest.

 

“I was so scared! You  _ totally _ passed out and we couldn’t wake you up! And then you started choking! That was the literal scariest thing–”

 

She chews me out the entire way to the dorms, up the stairs and into my room. Her nattering is bothering me, so I chase her out with half-hearted promises of quitting. I lay on the mattress, regretting my entire existence as I pledge, yet again, to never drink for the rest of my life.

 

My phone buzzes. There’s a thread.

 

!@#$ one puppu boi:  _ hello? _

!@#$ one puppu boi:  _ dont ignore me _

!@#$ one puppu boi: _ u ok _

 

I groan into my palms and whine internally. Should I drink more water?

 

quack quack:  _ yea lets go somewhere nice _

 

You instantly reply.

!@#$ one puppu boi:  _ cool want to go to the house _

Huh. Interesting.

 

quack quack:  _ how many people? _

!@#$ one puppu boi:  _ us and Bart _

 

Oh. Don’t get your hopes up, though. We’re still just friends. We’ll still be friends until the end of time. I’ll collect my twenty thousand cats and you’ll have… 

 

I shut all thoughts out of my brain.

 

quack quack:  _ ok :) _

 

I try to kill myself with my blankets, but unfortunately, I stay alive. Be still, my heart. 


End file.
